Wikibooks:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive4

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[edit] New contributions

Not got enough time to deal with this but could folk take a look at this. It has a copyright notice and is not formatted, other than that ....! Thanks --Herby talk thyme 11:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The copyright is incompatible with the GFDL since it specifies non-commercial use only. I will delete it shortly. --Jomegat 12:59, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Many thanks Jim for dealing with it - on wiki time is very limited at present & I know those patrolling RC can miss things, I do myself. Regards --Herby talk thyme 14:54, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Now merged

G'day, I've been merging a few modules from the Cookbook and transwiki, and have tagged them with {{now merged}} which places them into Category:Modules now merged into other modules. Could a kindly admin take a look at these and merge the edit histories please? cheers, Webaware talk 06:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Done — I've also went the extra step of importing and merging some of the articles from Wikipedia, to remove the need for listing the history attributes on the talk pages. --darklama 14:40, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks mate, that's excellent. Webaware talk 15:31, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another "keep an eye"

Going off line now but I think we have a classroom project happening Classroom Management Theorist and Theories. I've moved things to the right names, fixed the redlinks & welcomed them so far but I think it may still require attention - cheers --Herby talk thyme 16:12, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

You are correct, the leader of the project is User:Classroom management and she has messaged me a couple times about it, I pointed her to the help pages but may need assistance without knowing so we'll keep an eye out. Mattb112885 (talk) 22:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Project Locks

Talking with another Muggles' Guide user, the topic of the upcoming Harry Potter book (the final one) has come up and how its release might severely and negatively affect the book. Many users will likely rush to the book and add a lot of inappropriate and poorly developed content. Does anyone care to share ideas on how a book lockdown might work? I'd like to get a bot to lock all pages from anonymous users' editing for a few weeks around the book release. -withinfocus 02:39, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

In the event that you needed to lock down the entire book, you should use the automatic cascading protection feature. Create a page, such as User:Withinfocus/Muggles Guide Pages, or something similar, and create links to all the pages in the muggles guide book on that page. If you need to lock down the book, you go to protect your page, and select the option "Cascading protection - protect any pages included in this page." This should quickly and immediately lock all the pages in the book. I don't know if it's as easy to unprotect them all, however. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:38, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Why is it necessary to lock down this book? This is Wikibooks and not a select club of people so let them contribute, help them and fix whatever language and formatting 'mistakes' they make. Comments like "Many users will likely rush to the book and add a lot of inappropriate and poorly developed content" seem a little inappropriate and big-headed although I don't think you intended it to look that way. We really need to be more welcoming to new users rather than trying to scare ghem away. Xania talk 18:59, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
This is by far not going to be language and formatting mistakes. I am expecting a large number of vandalism edits to hit the book pages over several weeks. Wikipedia will surely experience this as well. If you peruse Wikipedia from time to time you may have also noticed some ideas regarding locking articles once they're sufficiently and professionally developed. Besides the topic of vandalism, keeping a work open forever has its positives and negatives and my book doesn't have the staff to comb through tons of edits. If a user would like to make a positive contribution to a page then I think it would be wise for them to create an account. This locking action would only be for anonymous users. You may not like this idea but at the same time I would expect you to understand the need for professionalism. The Muggles' Guide is very organized and I'd rather have edit waves like this managed with a little bit more quality control. This can be as simple as creating an account and establishing a real presence here. There are plenty of common or "mistake" pages we block or restrict here for anonymous users. I guess this issue might be something some people just fundamentally disagree with. -withinfocus 19:46, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't prefer this method. I'd much rather have a bot that sweeps the book's namespace. Based on past work with Herby on the book, I know this technically can be done but am interested in a tool that will accomplish it (or someone to make the action for me since I don't use bots). -withinfocus 19:34, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm not really interested at all in creating or using a bot that can perform Admin tasks such as page protections. Something like that really should be put up for community discussion before we try to do it, because it is a departure from how Admin tools are currently employed. Considering that bots can be a touchy subject, it's much better (and will be much less hassle) to use the cascading protection option.
Also, in response to Xania, Page protections are provided precisely for the reasons that a certain page is being misused. A millon newbie page tests will have the same effect as a concentrated vandalism attack. Protecting one page, or even a swath of related pages, will help to keep high-risk pages from going to hell. We don't protect pages to scare away users, we protect pages to protect content and prevent future problems. I see no reason why we couldn't page protect an entire book if the situation called for it. However, i will stipulate that it should likely be a very serious situation, and that the page protection should be very short-lived. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:42, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
If I recall correctly there already exist bots that can perform this action. I also see this as the community discussion since it involves the people who use the tools. -withinfocus 19:49, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough, I won't argue the point. I guess I don't understand the preference to using a bot over a cascading protection. A cascading protection can be done in one click, And should take effect immediately. A bot would have to go page-by-page, and in the worst case it could take several seconds to several minutes to perform all the page protections depending on the speed of your computer and the latency of the server. It would seem to me that for a truely critical situation the cascading protection would be more immediate and therefore more usefull. In terms of ease-of-use as well, the cascading protection is just one button click, and isn't going to be prone to the bugs and other nonsense that a bot could have. It might just be me, but that really does seem like the better solution. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:01, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Hope I'm not out of place here; I'm not an admin, but as the person who started this whole mess, it occurred to me that it might be useful for me to mention my thinking here. The thing is, we have had a lot of vandalism in the Muggle's Guide already, and we have dealt with it; but a lot of it has been people gratuitously posting spoilers in various places. With the release of the final book in the series, I think that we can expect to see a lot of posting of spoilers on the public pages of the project, and I was hoping to avoid a lot of that. The technique we use to protect the project does not matter; we have prior warning of the onset of this particular issue so the time it takes a bot to walk the list is immaterial. And this is a one-time thing, there will not be anything of this magnitude happening after this. Whatever people are more comfortable with, I think... Chazz (talk) 20:44, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
OK I can see why protection may be necessary but I would prefer protection only to be used when we see that it is necessary and not pre-emptive. The ability for anyone to add anything is central to Wiki projects so I would prefer to see an increase in vandalism before such measures are used. Xania talk 21:09, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Bot or cascade, both are fine really, it's just that the unlock will most likely need to be a bot action. I believe we have over 500 pages in the Muggles' Guide so automation is important. We can also wait to see if undesirable edits develop and withhold locking until then. -withinfocus 22:23, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
If we're going to wait until inappropriate edits start happening, I suspect that the cascade approach would be better, simply for the sake of speed... unlocking is not so critical, as we can always say "We're working on it, if you want a head start just get an ID." As for "how many pages": I make it 615. Chazz (talk) 23:04, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I really think that we have to wait until a problem arises. We aren't really in the habit of protecting pages--especially book pages--without a clear and present reason. Now if there is a problem though, You can be certain that there will be plenty of help if you need it. I'll look around for bots that can protect/unprotect the pages just in case a better solution cannot be found. Also, considering that no books have ever been mass-protected before, We should definitely err on the side of caution with this. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:11, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Much as I hate to say it, I think you have a very good point. We do have time to prepare, in any event. The target date is 21 July; book 7 will be released at 0001 UTC. Chazz (talk) 00:50, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
An easy alternative is to use DynamicPageList to monitor the book for most recent edits (assuming the book is fully categorized). See User:SB_Johnny/MGtest for an example (it only uses the main category there, but you can add others). --SB_Johnny | talk 09:16, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
If all you want is RC on pages in a single category, you can use Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:xxxx, e.g. Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter. But that won't reduce the effort much, if a bazillion new anon page edits / moves happen in the first 48 hours of a book release. Webaware talk 09:45, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Two things to consider as well: first, once the edits have started, it is entirely possible that at least some pages will be edited to be no longer in the Muggles' Guide category. It's easier for a vandal to do that – edit, Ctrl-A, start typing – than it is to retain the category. And second, a lot of the concerned editors may well be off line during the danger period – I know I will be, deliberately, because I want to read the ruddy thing myself. Chazz (talk) 15:58, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

(reset tabs) Well, vandalism may (and probably will) happen, but new contributors might come by too, and protecting the whole book isn't going to encourage them. HerbyThyme might or might not be around for the onslaught (RealLife stuff for him), but Xania is on Italian time, Az_1568 is on Pacific time, and Whiteknight is around a lot these days too (I'm around from 4-6 AM EDT, and whenever it happens to be raining (like it is at the moment)). We are, thankfully, not short-staffed admin-wise any longer though more would be merrier. Protecting an entire book -- particularly a book that intellegent young people might want to help write -- is not a good way to ensure the long-term health of our project (some of those young Harry Potter fans might later help write textbooks for particle physics or automotive repair). The best defense against vandals is to make sure that all of our trusted users have admin tools so that they can use them when they need them (hint, hint, Chazz and Webaware!), rather than needing to hope that some other admin will happen to be around when there's trouble (this is a wiki, after all... we're supposed to fix problems when we see them). --SB_Johnny | talk 18:51, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't have time right now for picking up admin responsibilities, but will gladly add the Muggle's guide cat to my RC rounds when it pops up in July and will watch the full RC from time to time (as I do now). But Chazz has a valid point, it will take extreme vigilance to keep a lid on this if a squillion new anon editors descend on the book, and "defences" are effectively just "clean up after the marauding hordes". In every other sphere (health, work safety, military, software design, manufacturing, driving, etc.) prevention is preferable to repair - so why can't we apply that here, just short term until the madness passes? Webaware talk 00:04, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
The only "responsibility" here is to just block an account or IP that you notice actively vandalizing while doing RC patrolling... it's just 3 buttons, not a wedding vow :).
The problem with protecting the book for that reason is that with those 100 vandals that will be attracted by the attention, there will also almost certainly be a few earnest new contributors, and our protection tool can't block anons without also blocking new accounts (hence the problems new editors have with adding things to bookshelf templates). Every book, wiki, etc. will be vandalized from time to time. When something's in the news, there will be more vandals. But when something's in the news there will also be new users interested in contributing. We have to just deal with vandalism, but we can't thrive without new contributors. --SB_Johnny | talk 00:33, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I think we (as a community) should create the page of all Muggles Guide pages in advance in anticipation that protecting the whole thing may be necessary on the 21st. Also we should gather a group of admins to watch the guide closely between mid July and mid August. I will be available in July to help. I also think that this is a tremendous opportunity for the Muggles guide to get some new contributors (and possibly attract some attention to Wikibooks as well.) I think those of us with interest and knowledge should all think about pitching in on the Muggles Guide in the upcoming weeks to prepare it for the large number of visitors it might receive July 14th-28th. Maybe Chazz or Webaware withinfocus could create/point us to a to-do list and organize a barn-raising of sorts. --xixtas talk 14:04, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Another preparatory step that might be useful is putting an informational template at the top of the Muggles guide pages that could be used for a book-wide announcement on the 20th. ("Please don't post spoilers... blah blah..") --xixtas talk 14:11, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Almost everything you would need to know about editing the project can be found here. If anyone would like to create a full list of Muggles' Guide pages with perhaps a bot that would be great, but this link might suffice for watching the book. I do hope that we can get some new editors and get a new bunch of content additions going. The entire book is basically outlined and all editors have to do is edit existing pages in their respective sections. There's a lot of structure to the book and so as long as people don't bust out new content (which should be relatively small if anything) we'll be running smoothly. If someone would like to be creative with some sort of Harry Potter template to post on the pages that would be awesome. I personally am not that template-creative but we do have a Wikijunior editor here who seems to write creative things pretty well ... -withinfocus 19:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I have created a page linking to all current book pages to facilitate protecting the whole book should it become advisable to do so. The page is at Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/All pages --xixtas talk 01:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'm wittering on about project locks again... I just finished reading the RfD for the plot detail of book 6 over on Wikipedia, and one of the things that came up there was that the timing of the appearance of the summary was bad: it appeared immediately after the book itself came out, and so could be seen as copyvio: by publishing a detail summary so soon, there was the appearance of trying to cut into book sales by providing a free equivalent. Is this something that we are likely to run afoul of? Chazz (talk) 21:55, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Robbywilliams255

I don't know what to make of this:

Special:Contributions/Robbywilliams255

Opinions? --Jomegat 16:42, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I deleted the pages as they only contained spam and warned the user. I'd probably block if the user continued to create spam pages tho. --Az1568 (Talk) 17:10, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Az. That was what I was thinking too. --Jomegat 17:38, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Endorsements now open for Wikimedia Foundation Board

Please post this notice to as many high-visibility locations as make sense for this community

The Wikimedia Board Election Steering Committee invites all community members to endorse candidates they support. Endorsements may be submitted on meta now till next Saturday, 23:59 June 23, 2007.

Each qualified community member can submit up to three endorsements. Please note several things:
- Only confirmed candidates are listed, so the list can be updated during the endorsements phase.
- You need an account on meta, not just the project that you are qualified to vote under, unless you meet the criteria on meta too.
- Please link your meta user page and your home wiki page. Detailed procedure can be found on the meta endorsement page.

All information is available on meta at:
On endorsements: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Endorsements/en
On candidates each: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/Candidates/en
Election general: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/en
FAQ: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2007/FAQ/en

Questions about election are welcome at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2007/FAQ

Thanks to devoted volunteering translators, those pages are also available in some languages other than English.

Thank you for your attention, we look forward to your participation.


For the election committee,
- Philippe | Talk 00:35, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Wikiversity:" Namespace

Not many people might be aware of this, but the pages from the "Wikiversity:" namespace were not deleted when the interwiki prefix for wikiversity was created. All the pages in that namespace, including some pages that were used in conjunction with our books, were essentially lost because they could not be reached by the system.

Well, all that has now been fixed, and all the "lost" pages are now found. All the pages that were in the "wikiversity:" namespace have been renamed to start with "Wikiversity-" instead. You can find a complete list of these pages at Special:Prefixindex/Wikiversity-. What we need to do is go through these pages, determine if any information in them is salvagable (like it can be used here by our books, or if it still needs to be moved to wikiversity), and possibly delete pages that aren't being used. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:10, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:MS SEXY

Probably harmless (although perhaps a bit creepy). Does this violate the "no offensive usernames" policy? if not, should we perhaps consider a "no creepy usernames" policy? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Not the latest Microsoft API for extranets then? Webaware talk 05:08, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
You don't know about Redmond, but I wouldn't doubt that some team there hasn't at least made it a code name for a future product. :)

In all seriousness, my experience with people who make crazy and off the wall user names like this usually are just playing with the user name creation system of the Wiki and nothing more. Although on some rare occasion I've seen them (particularly on Wikipedia) become a very major and significant contributor... more often because once they get started with a few edits it becomes additive and what was something as a lighthearted romp turns into something much more significant.

Blatantly obvious user names that are offensive, which either use hate words, impersonate others (such as the various Jimbo Wales wannabe trolls), or use obvious swear words certainly should be deleted. This one is a borderline case, but it only ranks on my smell-o-meter as something to watch closely and not necessarily something to be killed on sight. --Rob Horning 13:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand. How could this username possibly be a violation? Xania talk 21:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Rob, nothing Redmond does could possibly rival the guys at Motorola in Texas. Guess what they called the 6809 instruction for Sign-EXtending an 8-bit accumulator into a 16-bit one, i.e. where A gets its end-bit into B to make D?
I'm with Xania on this one; a silly name, but not offensive. Not even particularly silly, in the scheme of things. For a time, my now-wife went by the nickname "Ms Completely" (to her chagrin). Webaware talk 01:54, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
No. I see nothing wrong with it. Probably a moot point anyway. --xixtas talk 02:09, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
Let's not be reactionary with usernames. Hateful and vulgar names shouldn't be permitted, but silly names like this seem fine to me. They might want to change it later, but we have b'crats a-plenty here, so changes won't cause problems.
Keep in mind that some names like this might be created for SUL-related issues. This one apparently wasn't created for that reason, but with the exception of globally offensive usernames, we probably shouldn't assume bad intent. --SB_Johnny | talk 14:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:Citing sources

This page was created with an unhelpful message. Any suggestions on good text to replace it with? It is linked to by pages using the {{fact}} and {{uncited}} templates. Webaware talk 23:56, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Deleted for now, can replace with something appropriate later. -withinfocus 01:42, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Algebra I in Simple English

This book has been transwikied to the Simple English wikibooks, and now somebody is nominating the pages in it for deletion. I personally am against deleting this book for a number of reasons. Just because they have a copy of it doesnt mean that we can't have a copy of it as well. I would like to ask all admins to refrain from speedy deleting any of these pages until we can get some kind of consensus on it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:01, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Changed them to vfd. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 02:40, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help, I need an Image(s) deleted please

I mistakenly uploaded 2 images I would rather not have loaded. There are the same image but I messed with the overwrite upload and now I have 3 images in the history.

I would ask if some one could please delete them all for me please.

The image is

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Image:AuthorsTeardropTrailer.jpg

Sorry and Thanks

Wikiwerks 02:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 02:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Matt! I'll try to be more careful. Wikiwerks 03:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Impersonated

I am w:User:LaraLove. Someone has created an account here claiming to be me. Redirecting their user page to my English Wikipedia user page, using the same signature that I use on en.wiki and stating that they are me. I'm not sure what you can do, but this needs to be addressed. I can post a message on my en.wiki account regarding this which would prove that I am, in fact, LaraLove. Any help is appreciated. Thank you, 75.183.122.31 16:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, nevermind. Herby is taking care of it. :) 75.183.122.31 16:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Hey - we aren't all sleepy here you know :-) Done - cheers --Herby talk thyme 16:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Can I assume that account? 75.183.122.31 16:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, i think you can. Let me do some bcrat magic. Do you have a valid email account registered at en.wp? If so, i will email you the password there. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Old account renamed, new account created. I emailed you the password on your en.wp email address. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. :) 75.183.122.31 19:39, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Public user accounts

Whilst recent-changes patrolling, I came across these accounts:

Both seem to be published-password accounts, can someone block them please, thanks?? --SunStar Net 16:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

If i may ask, how did you determine that their passwords have been made public? are these accounts doing anything suspicious or vandalous that would cause them to need to be blocked? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
  • If you see their userpages, it says "The password is ...". They currently have no contributions. --SunStar Net 16:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm against blocking public accounts (shared password), we should treat them as anonymous and fallow the same rules. --Panic 17:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with this one Panic. They are effectively concealing their IP address in this fashion (they are welcome to edit from an IP anyway). In this instance probably using an Open Proxy which would have allowed anonymity anyway until anyone found it and took action. Edit by all means but not in such a concealed fashion - just my 0.02 - cheers --Herby talk thyme 18:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
There are several problems in censoring this:
  • You can't enforce it effectively. (you will only catch the ones that are very obvious about it)
  • It can even be discussed that sharing an account is legit (lets say a group of people wanting to share authorship of the work, this would be a way of going about it)
  • Registering an account doesn't hide the IP. (it hides it from the "public" but not from the "system" it does even make it easier to see what the "user" did, if he/she decides to do problematic actions using several IPs it will only give more trouble to correct)
As for blocking public proxys it is only being done because its the less of two evils (preemptively blocking the ability of users to use anonymous proxys or allowing their use for vandalism), it is even against the Wikibookians spirit to expect the worst from others but was a solution of compromise. --Panic 18:42, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I can't see a problem. Until some vandalism has been done using these accounts we shouldn't do anything - we are not the United States and preemptive account isn't the Wiki way. Has anyone ever proven that blocking all these anonymous and open proxy IPs actually reduces vandalism? Xania talk 21:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I think the logic was to save work and use available lists on other Wiki projects (we are talking about a minority of users that may need to use such services, I haven't seen no one asking for a unblock. I would support such request if some kind of justification was presented, as it is I'm for blocking and saving work on cleanups).
PS: If someone needs such services please attempt to use the mailing list or the IRC channel to ask for it unanimously. --Panic 23:10, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm with Xania on this one, until the accounts are used for vandalism, they really can't be treated like vandals. Even if they are a strange way of duplicating an open proxy, at the first site of vandalism we will block the account, do a CU, block all source IPs (probably for a short time), etc. Having a registered account name doesnt cause any problems for us, if anything it's a way to group together several vandalism source IPs (if the account does indeed produce vandalism) and then we can block them all at once. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:54, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] stewards

Hi guys,

(btw, the link "post a comment" was broken for me, then we'll do it the oldfashioned way :) ) I heard and noticed that some of the policy pages on WIkibooks mention a possibility to file an arbitration case with the stewards or the Wikimedia Foundation Board. This either directly either as appeal. I have to disappoint you that there is *no* such possibility at least regarding the stewards. The stewards have been elected by the Wikimedia community to perform administrative tasks on the request of the Wikimedia communities. We do not have a mandate to handle arbitration cases. Please remove all mentioning of such appeals etc in your policies. I have made a few remarks on the talkpages of the policy pages I was able to find.

As for the Wikimedia Foundation Board I am not sure. Please approach them to be certain. I assume that they don't have time to handle such cases. They neither do have such mandate imho, they are elected / appointed as board member of an irl foundation, not as godking of communities. Please reconsider these mentionings thoughtfully, and if you still think they should remain, first ask the Board whether they feel OK with it.

Best regards, Effeietsanders 19:30, 23 August 2007 (UTC) (steward)

I believe I've fixed any issues with arbitration besides the now-defunct Panic arbitration process which is now being discussed on the appropriate page. -withinfocus 03:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template: delete

This template has several links for admins to check before deleting anything tagged. One of them (that you're "especially" supposed to check) is the last edit. Shouldn't it be the edit before that? The last edit is almost-guaranteed to be someone tagging it for deletion (surprise!). Anything of interest would be before that. Thoughts? – Mike.lifeguard | talk 22:22, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

That is a good call, and an issue i've never noticed before. I can't find a way to show the second-to-last edit either. Barring that, should we remove the link entirely, or should we change the link to point to the history page, instead of to the last diff? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:04, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
I just made some changes that I think fixes that problem, if I understand what is wanted. --darklama 23:40, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what changed there. It still looks like it's going to the last edit. Hopefully there is a way to get the 2nd-last edit. There is already a link to the history, so it should get deleted if the 2nd-last edit can't be done. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 23:47, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
What Darklama did was create a link to the previous version of the page, not to the previous diff. That should serve the same purpose, i think. Looking at the previous version of the page will show you why exactly it is nominated for deletion, but it still wont show you what was there previous to the bad contents. It could have been a legitimate page that got hit with spam, and that's what we want admins to find out before deleting. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:53, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Maybe the one I did now does whats wanted then? Seems to show the difference between the 2nd to last edit and the previous edit. --darklama 23:59, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
That does appear to be what we want. good job darklama. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
That's is exactly. Thanks a bunch! – Mike.lifeguard | talk 02:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Are these redirecting to themselves?

These are listed as double redirects. But each of the 3 pages for all of these looks like it's the same as the other 2. Can a page redirect to itself?

# User:Nahallac Silverwinds (Edit) →‎ User:Nahallac Silverwinds →‎ User:Nahallac Silverwinds
# User talk:Globalautomation (Edit) →‎ User talk:Globalautomation →‎ User talk:Globalautomation
# User talk:Nahallac Silverwinds (Edit) →‎ User talk:Nahallac Silverwinds →‎ User talk:Nahallac Silverwinds

– Mike.lifeguard | talk 23:50, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I is strange, I admit that. However, I dont care how other people choose to waste their user or user talk pages. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't either, I was just trying to clear out the double redirects, and I got stuck on those. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 23:57, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I managed to fix these. As you thought Mike.Lifeguard, these pages did indeed redirect to themselves. I didn't know a page could redirect to itself. Urbane (Talk) (Contributions) 09:09, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DeleteMyAccount

Hi, A wikibooks account has been created in my name and IP address. I never knew about this until I got a message from wiki@wikimedia.org. Please delete my account. User name: Mala Thanks Mala 23:55, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

What account do you want to be deleted, "User:Mala"? I've checked the records, and there are no other accounts from your IP address. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:28, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MediaWiki:Sitestatstext

Hi everybody,

At the statistics page there are showed some variables which have been disabled since 2005 or so. These are $3 and $6. Could you please remove it? It looks a bit strange when I see that there are nearly 27,000 pages, but only 25,000 page views. How does that work?! ;-)

-- 89.204.132.8 08:15, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

You know, that's actually not a bad idea. No sense keeping around values that arent even being updated. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:28, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WB:VIP

I really have to ask, because it's something that I feel like doing all the time and I have to stop myself. Would people really object if I redirected WB:VIP to the administrator's noticeboard? The VIP page is hardly used at all anymore (last notification was in July), and most people come here with their problems directly anyway. Would people mind if we merged that page into this one? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:08, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I feel like the purpose of WB:VIP is so non-admins can tell admins that there's someone screwing stuff up and we need to block them and fix it... if an admin sees stuff happening, they'd just deal with it themselves; no real need to log it. So: yes! users wanting to tell the admins something should do it here; that's what this page is for. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 19:50, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] autoblock

When and how should autoblock be disabled? I didn't notice a checkbox on the block page, but I notice that a bunch of the blocks in the block log have autoblock disabled. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 20:12, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The second clickable option on the block dialog is "Automatically block the last IP address used by this user, and any subsequent IPs they try to edit from". That's the autoblock. When you look at the list of currently blocked accounts, it will show random numbers to designate those IPs and the block will be for 24 hours. As a rule, it's better to leave that selected, so that a vandal won't just log in to another account and go back to mischief-making. Some admins unselect it out of concern for accidental collareral blocks, and admins with checkuser will sometimes not bother with autoblock because they'll go straight to the IP and analyze what they find there in order to decide whether to hardblock the IP. --SB_Johnny | PA! 21:32, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm guessing this has no bearing on blocking of IPs? – Mike.lifeguard | talk 21:42, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Nope, has no effect on IPs (since you're already blocking them), just as "block anonymous only" has no effect when blocking a registered account. --SB_Johnny | PA! 22:22, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
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